camping

by Alice Mulford

My family used to go camping every once in a while. When I was younger, I was fairly fond of it. As I got older, I stopped enjoying it so much. I imagine that when I was younger, I was a bit more tough, and didn’t mind lousy sleeping conditions or going a week or two without bathing. Also, as everyone knows, you are much more energized between the ages of five and ten than you will be throughout the rest of your life.

The last time my family went camping, I was going into my senior year of high school. We went to Grayson Highlands, up in the mountains. We’d gone there several times before, the first time being when I was at that age where rolling around in dirt and leaves sounded like fun. That particular year, though, I spent a lot of time complaining and not being able to make it up the hiking trails. I’m not much of an outdoors girl. I get short of breath quickly, and if I so much as look at poison oak, I break out all over. I live in constant fear of ticks and spiders in my shoes.

Despite this, there would be a time of day when Grayson Highlands became magical. There was a rock we had discovered when we were there the first year… If you looked at it from a certain angle, it looked like an enormous lion. We named it the Aslan rock, after C.S. Lewis’s character. We climbed to the top of it and found that there was a bit of rock at the top shaped like a bench, almost, and we liked to sit there and look over the trees.

Back when I was seven and at the campsite, I had climbed to the top of that rock to be alone. I was enjoying the peace of everything around me, and presently, my mother came to join me. We sat there together, and I don’t remember what we were talking about, but this magical sound drifted through the woods after several moments.

“Bagpipes,” I said.

“Bagpipes?” said my mother. “No, it sounds like bagpipes, but it can’t be! Where would there be bagpipes?”

The music continued to flow over everything, and suddenly, my mother realized that I was right. We jumped up and climbed down from the rock, beginning our desperate hunt for the bagpipes. It was sort of a silly quest to go on, come to think of it. With all of the rocks and hills, the music sounded like it was coming from everywhere all at once.

We made our way back to our campsite first, picking up my sisters, but leaving my father, who was cooking dinner. We ran around in the woods, off of the main trail, until we came upon a man standing on the side of a hill, surrounded in ferns, and yes, playing a bagpipe, all alone.

My mother was delighted, and the man was quite friendly. He was apologetic at first – he had meant to find a place to practice where he wouldn’t bother anybody, but there is no such place in the mountains.

When I got older, there were no bagpipes. Still, there was the Aslan rock, a place of solitude and beauty. And at the right time of day, I could still feel peace over everything. It was the time of day after I’d braved the moldy shower and before it got to be freezing. It was the time of day when I was able to separate myself from the unbearable cheeriness of my father, who was practically built to live in the Great Outdoors, and also from the silliness of my sisters, and the solitude of my mother, who was reading her books.

I would take my notebook out to an uninhabited corner of the woods and sit and write, and I could feel myself becoming a part of my surroundings. It was magical. I felt in tune with nature, and closer to God in these times.

Over time, I learned to find God on hiking paths, as well, when I ignored my fatigue and felt everything around me. I could see Him in the sunlight pushing through the leaves. I could hear Him when trees rustled and when birds sang. I heard Him in running water, and I tasted Him in wild blueberries. His beauty was found in twisted rocks and curling trees. I smelled Him in laurels. I felt Him.

And I don’t understand why other people don’t see that in nature.